Are 3 years enough to turn two Worcester schools around?

Sunday

Jun 30, 2013 at 6:00 AMJun 30, 2013 at 11:50 AM

Three years ago, Chandler Elementary Community and Union Hill schools were under the cloud of being in the first group of state-designated Level 4 schools, the lowest performing and least improving in the state. The principals were being replaced, and many staff members decided to work elsewhere.

By Jacqueline Reis TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

There is usually a lot of happiness at the end of a school year. Kids enjoy spree days, slide shows and Popsicles, staff are proud and ready for a break, and parents mark another notch in their child's development.

That is how it was this year at Chandler Elementary Community and Union Hill schools. Three years ago, that wasn't the case. While kids were happy enough, the schools were under the cloud of being in the first group of state-designated Level 4 schools, the lowest performing and least improving in the state. The principals were being replaced, and many staff members decided to work elsewhere.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education gave Chandler Elementary, Union Hill and 33 other schools statewide three years to show “dramatic and sustainable improvement,” and those three years end this month. The verdict won't be in until the state publicizes the schools' spring Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System scores in September, but during the final weeks of school, both communities seemed upbeat.

“I think the Level 4 was the best thing that could have happened to us,” said Heather A. Coughlin, a special education inclusion teacher at Union Hill.

“The whole school has changed, the whole attitude, the idea of having higher expectations has changed. It's a more positive atmosphere,” she said. “Everybody is here to help everybody out, and everybody is here to help every single kid, no matter what you do.”

Principal Marie D. Morse said her hiring decisions have been more about people's mindset than their experience. “You have to have that belief in your students' abilities and never give up on that,” Mrs. Morse said.

How Mrs. Coughlin does her job has changed, too. She once worked with small groups of students in their classrooms or in spaces like closets, but she now uses the former art room to teach five to 10 kids for a half hour at a time. “They get more common core that way, but they also get special attention on something they might be having trouble with,” she said. It was a lot harder to do that in the middle of an active classroom, she said.

At Chandler Elementary, first-grade teacher Carmelo Borges said he is more effective, too. He said Chandler Elementary now focuses more on effective teaching than following a store-bought program, uses leveled readers instead of anthologies and focuses its math instruction around specific skills, not a manual.

“How you teach the skill is up to you,” he said. “It's based not on what you're doing, it's based on what the results are.”

Teachers are also teaching one another more, through common planning time and through rounds, a practice taken from the medical profession in which teachers observe their peers and give constructive feedback.

“I don't think what I was doing three years ago even comes close to what I'm doing right now,” Mr. Borges said. He has been teaching for 17 years, four of them at Chandler.

Alice M. Ball, a parent, grandparent and crossing guard at Union Hill, hasn't noticed classroom changes so much as the change in atmosphere and student behavior. Miss Ball had been having trouble with the previous principal and wasn't surprised when the state labeled the school Level 4.

“I said, 'This is going to change things,' and it did,” she said. Union Hill, like Chandler Elementary, has voluntary school uniforms. Miss Ball said the children are more respectful and the school has been more welcoming. “Every time you stepped in the building, you felt the love,” Miss Ball said. “You knew right then it was going to be good.”

Students themselves were more tuned into physical changes.

“We get to see more things from the technology and learn more about interesting things,” said Beverly S. Rosario, 11, who just graduated from Union Hill. “I think things are more organized. ... Outside the building, there used to be trash and garbage. Now there's, like, new plants.”

There's also a new playground. “Now, it's like a little bit better,” said Robert J. Jackson, 12.

When Beverly was asked what she would tell younger students about the school, she said, “I would say come here.”

Both schools have grown. Chandler Elementary will rent space nearby at the Central Community Branch of the YMCA of Central Massachusetts starting next year. Union Hill has grown 45 percent in three years. At both schools, a larger percentage of students are staying through the school year, according to figures from last year.

“The community's invested in us again. We're grateful that they trust us with this important job,” Mrs. Morse said.

There have been other investments, too. Union Hill gained reinvigorated partnerships with Worcester Academy and others, a $50,000 donation from philanthropist Pat Lanza, a reconfigured front office and a library. Both schools have part-time librarians, which are rare in the district's elementary schools, and each has a lead teacher. Both have 30 minutes of common teacher planning time and a school day that is 90 minutes longer than typical. While Chandler Elementary had an extended day before, it was in a different form. Now, the school simply has longer academic blocks, Principal June E. Eressy said.

Both schools also have summer professional development for their staff, and both have also had $400,000 to $500,000 each a year in federal school redesign grants to help pay for teachers' additional time. (Worcester, in fact, has allocated a larger percentage of its school redesign grants to teacher stipends than have other districts with Level 4 schools. Some of those districts spent up to a fifth of their dollars on consultants, while Worcester has only spent 5 percent on consultants.)

The grants, which started a year after the Level 4 designation, will continue through next year, but what happens after that is up in the air. Meanwhile, a third Level 4 school, Burncoat Street Preparatory School, was added in November 2011.

The main issue before the money runs out, however, is what the state decides about the city's first two Level 4 schools in the fall. For Mr. Borges, whether Chandler Elementary remains at Level 4 or moves up or down is less important than making sure what teachers are doing is effective. “I think that anyone at any level needs that little push toward realizing they're being complacent,” he said.

Mrs. Morse echoed that. “The label to me isn't as important as the progress our kids make,” she said, and she believes they are learning more. Internal tests show that 72 percent of Union Hill students who will be third graders this fall are on grade level, the highest percentage she has seen.

The students, teachers and principals have all put in the effort. “It's been like running a marathon at a sprint pace for three years,” Mrs. Morse said.

“It's such hard work. People really have no idea,” Ms. Eressy said. The pressure of the Level 4 designation, the fact that 96 percent of her school's families are low-income, and the mobility of the students take their toll, she said.

In addition, both Chandler Elementary and Union Hill have more students now who are not proficient in English than three years ago.

Still, Ms. Eressy said, people often get the wrong idea about Chandler Elementary's community. The parents “love their kids just as much as you love your kids, and they really, sincerely want to make a better life for them. They just need somebody to help them,” she said.

The schools have a lot on their plate. The 2012 MCAS scores showed that only about a third of Union Hill's students scored at grade level. At Chandler Elementary, only about a fifth of students did so. Still, that was better than in 2010.

Although new test scores will be released this fall, they won't be the only measure by which each of the two schools will be judged. State officials will also look at whether the conditions are in place for continuous improvement and whether the district can sustain the schools' improvement.

Marco C. Rodrigues, the district's chief academic officer, said he is confident that the schools are poised to move out of Level 4. The state requires an annual visit from an evaluator to both schools, and he said the contractor's report this year had a lot of good things to say. However, the report, by Beverly-based SchoolWorks, has not gone to the School Committee yet, and he declined to release it until district officials review it further.

“In my opinion, three years is not ever enough to turn around a school,” Mr. Rodrigues said. “We are not where we want to be yet, but I think we have grown tremendously.”